Palazzo Maffei Casa Museo
Baroque palazzo of six rooftop deities rising over a buried Roman temple, now a private art museum.
Palazzo Maffei Casa Museo in Verona opens on a December day in 1469, when a banker's order to raise a third floor sends workmen crashing into the buried foundations of a Roman temple. The guide follows what happened to the marble they pulled up, and how it ended up sharing the roofline with five carved gods who never set foot in ancient Rome. Centuries later the building's story turns indoors, following a young Veronese collector who spent fifty years quietly buying paintings, starting with a canvas of a lonely quay hiding a loaf of bread. He kept most of it stored away from view, almost alone, for decades.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.